To Christians everywhere, the idea of missionary work is not a foreign one. But their service as missionaries often takes Christians to foreign places.

For the last 50 years, the Capuchin Franciscan friars of the Province of St. Augustine in Pittsburgh have spread their message to the people in the mountains of New Guinea. The Rev. Bill Fey, 62, of Cooperstown has been part of that mission since 1987.

"I was in high school at St. Fidelis, in Herman, at the time," said Fey of his first exposure to the mission work. "Those guys would come and show us slides and what they were doing and I thought that maybe that's what I'd like to do."

Fey never lost sight of that dream, and in 1963 he professed the Capuchin vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. It took another 24 years, however, before he got to live his dream of serving in New Guinea.

Fey said spreading the word of God is as exciting to him today as it seemed when he was in high school. When he was home recently for a rare visit, Fey shared his views about the progress of Christianity in New Guinea.

"(It was) only in the 1930s (that) they found people living there up in the mountains," he said. "Some guys went looking for gold and found people. The Australian government only opened it up to allow missions in the 1950s - 1955 is when our first Capuchins went over.

"You do feel like you are in the Acts of the Apostles," he said, referring to Acts 17, where Paul told the Greeks he could identify a deity described as "a Gold Unknown" on one of their altars in order to introduce them to Christianity.

In New

Guinea

culture, "When someone gets sick,

it's something personal," said Fey, explaining how the indigenous people attribute the cause of their ailments. "(Typically, the people are) faced with three possible explanations: a secular medical one: germs cause disease; a traditional personal one: a broken relationship with someone or with a deceased ancestor; and a Christian religious one: the devil causes it to hurt us or God causes it to punish us."

The Rev. Francis Fugini, 79, of Chicora is another Capuchin priest who has participated in disseminating the faith in New Guinea. He's been there four times and said he is still amazed at the complexity of such simple people.

"They have a fear of evil influences, witchcraft, poisoning," he said. "It's a real struggle because (their culture is) so different than ours. They have a very complex character.

"On another level, they are very open to Christian beliefs, yet they try to hold onto their traditions. They've accepted the teaching of Christianity, but they bridge it somehow. They straddle two worlds."

In the case of an illness, the people may offer a pig to an ancestor, take medicine, and pray intently to God for a healing, thus taking all three beliefs into account. "They'll chew beetle nut and believe in magic, yet still worship God," Fugini said. "They don't find any contradiction in that."

Fey finds the job of the missionaries is actually one of helping the people find the truth in their cultural thinking and the truth in things out of their control.

"Because I teach philosophy (at the seminary) (I) try to get the guys to think in their own culture: keeping good relationships with ancestor spirits, and spirits of the dead that are still around, spirits of the past," he said.

"There's a good and a bad side to (their thinking). (I try) to help them find truth in that and the truth in things out of their control. There is a psychological factor in health, and people who think they had a spell put on them make themselves sick."

Because Christianity is so new in New Guinea, Christian terminology between the languages is still tentative, and although educated native men attend the seminary, Fey's primary task when teaching them is to simplify the complex. "Try to explain the body and the soul," he said. To him, the challenge is thrilling. "To try to get something to make sense in simple words, you have to know what you're talking about."